Tags:
Journalism of Courage
When the Justice U.C. Banerjee Committee was constituted in September last year to inquire into the fire in the Sabarmati Express, there was scepticism about its outcome already. Admittedly, the investigations so far into Godhra8217;s truth looked inadequate or unwilling for the job. Evidence of the Gujarat police8217;s weak spine had come into the public domain; the Nanavati-Shah commission was set up by the very government that repeatedly reposed its confidence in Narendra Modi. But in September, the disquiet was this: could the answer to the credibility problem be a parallel inquiry set up by the UPA government at the behest of Laloo Yadav, in the run-up to assembly elections in Bihar? That scepticism was reinforced in January this year, by Justice Banerjee8217;s premature announcement of his interim conclusions, coinciding pointedly with the Bihar elections, affirming Laloo Yadav8217;s favoured theory about the Sabarmati fire. It is underlined now, by his green signal to a Railway Board sponsored tour of Europe and Japan before he submits his final report, as revealed by this paper on Wednesday.
It may be that the 10-day tour that will take Justice Banerjee through cooler climes has nothing to do with his committee8217;s final conclusions on Godhra. It might arguably even lend them a certain weight born of comparative insights from 8220;studying8221; railway systems in his packed itinerary abroad. But Justice Banerjee has put the credibility of his commission on the line in a sensitive case by accepting government largesse while his report is still not done. Like those revelations in May, that Justice Phukan was provided an IAF aircraft to make what was essentially a private visit while he probed Tehelka, Justice Banerjee8217;s proposed trip abroad on tax payers8217; expense puts a question mark on the impartiality of fact-finding bodies.
